We all know what gaming laptops are supposed to look like: big and bulky, complete with gaudy Christmas lighting and enough air vents to make a Cylon cringe. That's what you get if you want desktop power in an itty-bitty frame, and even then it's going to cost more than a few ha'pennies.
That's how it used to be, and not just for gaming laptops. Then Apple came along and made a unibody design, component prices and sizes dropped, and it became possible to fit more in a laptop for less. But laptop makers have only recently started to adapt, and all the while Mac sales have gone through the roof. So leave it to a gaming company to come up with a proper competitor.
The Blade, from San Diego-based Razer (which made its first laptop just two years ago), is the culmination of years of frustration in the PC gaming market. Most manufacturers have settled on making their laptops more powerful instead of building innovative designs, so Razer decided to make its own. In a strange twist of fate, there is no prettier Windows laptop available — gaming or otherwise.
Beauty Is the Beast
Were it not for the color, it would be easy to mistake the Razer Blade for a MacBook. The black aluminum unibody, high-quality finish and magnetically locking lid drive the point home and back. Every design element appropriated from Apple is expertly replicated in the Blade without making it a cheap knockoff. All that's missing is the MagSafe magnetic power connector ... and an easy way to clean off fingerprints.
Razer managed to do all this without much compromise. The 14-inch laptop is powered by the newest quad-core Intel Core i7 processor clocked at 2.2GHz, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and discrete Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M graphics. These components — along with a best-in-class solid-state drive from Samsung and a massive 70 watt-hour battery — all drive great performance without making the product cumbersome.
If there were a 14-inch MacBook Pro Retina, the Blade would probably match its size and weight. At 4.1 pounds and just 0.66 inches high, the Blade is as heavy as the Retina and thinner than the MacBook Air at its thickest point. It's thin, sleek and stylish. Starting at $1,800 (I tested the $2,000 version Razer loaned me for this review), the Blade is a steal. But as gorgeous as it is, underneath that pretty shell is one of the worst flaws any laptop could have: an awful display.
An Ugly Duckling Display
Razer had to go and ruin the one thing that owners will look at the most. The screen is bright — so bright that you can write a document with the display set to 10% brightness outside on a sunny day. But that exceptional brightness causes washed-out and inaccurate colors, poor black levels, and very low contrast levels. In other words, videos and games look bad, much worse than they should.
The Dark Knight is washed out, and night scenes completely lose their stark quality. Games are visible and playable, but "good enough" is not part of a gamer's vocabulary. The least Razer could have done was thrown in a panel that won't make users jealous of a two-year-old smartphone. And that's not even mentioning the terrible vertical viewing angles.
What makes it worse is that the Blade isn't any other laptop. The keyboard is built perfectly for touch typists with low-profile keys and a dull green backlight. A massive trackpad is the best I've ever tested on a Windows-based machine. And sound quality from the stereo speakers is excellent for gaming, videos and music. Every major part of the Blade is great ... except for the display.
The only other thing missing is an Ethernet connector. Sure, the Blade is too thin for it, but gamers want the fastest, most stable connection possible when playing. Wi-Fi just doesn't cut it, even with the laptop's Wireless-N card. It's moderately fast by today's standards — I clocked upwards of 35Mbps upload and download — but Wi-Fi cut out at least a half dozen times while testing and playing. Nobody wants to time out of a game, ever.
Performance on the Go
If the Blade's thin frame and small size make you think it a weak gaming laptop, you'd be right, relatively speaking. Larger laptops like Alienware's M18x and others pump out a lot more power, but they're desktop replacements. The Blade is actually a portable gaming laptop, not just a powerhouse that should be on wheels. And you'll want to carry it around.
With the 1,600 x 900 resolution display, most modern games like Bioshock Infinite and Tomb Raider will run between 45-60 frames per second (fps) on mainstream settings, and with a few concessions at 30+ fps on higher settings. The 1,600x900 resolution is perfect for the 765M, but jumping above that (i.e. 1080p) drops the frame rate to an uncomfortable 20-26 fps. Considering how bad the display is, solid gaming performance on an external display should be a no-brainer.
Like most gaming laptops, the Blade gets hot, but Razer did a great job with heat management. It rarely gets too hot except by the hinge, which users will never have to touch. It does get uncomfortably warm on the keyboard after some gaming; otherwise the Blade remains cool and quiet. For how much power the Blade is using, it's surprisingly quiet.
The bow to tie this excellent package together is good battery life. The Blade can muster over five hours of non-gaming use (light web browsing) to an hour and a half of nonstop hardcore gaming. It doesn't match recent laptops like the new MacBook Air's 12 hours, but it averages a respectable four-plus hours of web browsing, word processing, downloads, and streaming flash video, more than enough for a class, flight, or LAN battle.
A New Benchmark for Windows Laptops
To call the Razer Blade a great gaming laptop is a disservice to laptops and consumers the world over. It's a great laptop, period. It combines portability, performance, and design without compromising battery life or price. The Blade sets a new benchmark for what it means to be a Windows laptop.
For what it is — a high-powered laptop for gaming, video editing, and other intensive activities — there is no better Windows laptop than the Blade. It bests the competition in nearly all key areas: excellent game and workhorse performance, a best-in-class keyboard, a massive and responsive trackpad, solid stereo speakers and good battery life. And of course the Blade is thin, sleek and — aside from the tri-headed light-up logo — totally badass.
This almost perfect picture is marred by a bad display with awful color reproduction, black levels and color contrast. The graphics card is built perfectly for the 1,600 x 900 panel, but not for external screens or TVs where the picture looks infinitely better. No wired Internet is forgivable — after all, an Ethernet-to-USB 3.0 adapter only costs about $30. A good-enough display may not be.
As weak as the display is, there isn't a higher-quality Windows laptop available. The performance-to-quality ratio is just stunning. But like all first-generation products, readers may be wise to wait for next year's fleshed-out model. If you're in the market for a high-quality laptop, gaming or otherwise, and don't mind that the picture quality is mediocre, there is nothing better than the Blade.
The Lowdown
What's Good
Extremely well-built and good-looking body
Great keyboard, trackpad and heat management
Superb balance between power, size and battery life
What's Bad
Mediocre display with poor contrast and color accuracy
No Ethernet connector or adapter
Three-headed snake logo just looks bad
Images by Mashable, James Pikover
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